“I know. I get it. Go, go to the game and see your man.”
She skipped out of the kitchen and I was stuck slinging fries with Jon-Jon. “Thanks, Charlie,” she called out.
* * *
I WALKED BY Adam’s loft on the way back home. His car was gone and there was a FOR RENT sign in the front window. I guess that was that.
11. Oh Brother
Seth called after the game. “I went four for four again.”
“Shit, maybe it’s Helen,” I said.
“I don’t know. She was pretty cute cheering Roddy on. Did you hear?”
“Yes, of course. She told me right away, but I still can’t believe it. Does Roddy do that?” I felt I needed to do some recon for my friend.
“No,” Seth said adamantly. “He’s, like, noncommittal. He’s never even introduced a girl to his parents. They came to the game tonight and met Helen.”
“Wow.” As fast as it was moving, I guess it was real. “Well, it will either be beautiful and amazing or it will go down in flames.”
“I think it will be beautiful and amazing,” Seth said.
“Die-hard optimist?”
He laughed. “You make that sound bad. Oh hey, Obi-Wan wants to meet you,” he said.
I rolled my eyes, thankful Seth couldn’t see me. “Oh yeah. Well, have him call me and we’ll make a date.” I had an instant flashback to the panty man and his dog obsession.
When we got off the phone, I got into bed and thought about the current state of my life. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been willing to give any guys a chance. Hell, I stuck it out with Curtis way longer than any normal person would have. Even as he’d bless himself over and over and do his strange rituals after seeing an El Camino, I would sit by and watch him and wait until he was done. I put up with the panty man stealing my most expensive underwear and I had put up with Paul’s unwillingness to commit. I was a saint and I was also very seriously in denial. I knew none of those relationships would pan out, just like I knew none of my other careers would stick. That’s why I was willing to waste my time with them. They were safe. And I feared permanence. No normal person would go home with a guy they found on a Los Angeles street in the middle of the night carrying Chinese food.
But I think I felt with Adam what Helen was feeling for Roddy. Too bad Adam hadn’t felt the same way. Too bad Adam was gone. That combination of spectacular sex, the way he looked, the way he talked, the way he thought . . . I was hung up on him and still felt really defeated by him. My self-confidence, or at least the little I’d had, went in the tank after that night. Now Seth was here and I wouldn’t even give him a chance to show me who he was.
* * *
SETH CALLED AGAIN a couple of days later but I didn’t call him back. I came home from work on Friday and all of Helen’s things were packed. Roddy was carrying boxes down the stairs. “Hey, Charlie.”
“It’s Charlotte.” I couldn’t make eye contact with him. I walked by Helen in the living room. “Doesn’t he have a game?”
“Not tonight. They have a bye.”
“Did you know what a bye was before this morning?”
She stood from her spot on the floor where she was packing up the last of her books. “Don’t be an asshole, Charlotte.”
Roddy came back in and stood at my side. “Can I talk to you outside?” he asked.
“Me?” I pointed to my chest.
“Yeah.” He was apprehensive.
“Oh god, what now?” I mumbled, and then followed him. We walked out the front door onto the landing. A gust of wind kicked up the bottom of my dress, and I tried to smooth it down. “What do you want? It’s windy and I want to go back inside.”
“I know it feels like I’m taking your best friend away—”
“Did Helen fill your head with that crap?”
“No, it’s obvious you feel that way; otherwise you wouldn’t be acting like a five-year-old.” He had a point. Roddy had a rumble to his voice that you could feel on your skin. It was mildly unnerving. “I just want you to know, I’ve never met anyone like her. I’m not gonna hurt her.” He smiled sincerely. I looked into his light-brown eyes and saw someone speaking from the heart.
“How do you know?” I said.
“I just know.”
When will I just know? I wondered. “Well, if you change your mind and decide to hurt Helen, I’ll make it very hard for you to catch a ball ever again.”
He smiled. “Something tells me I should take that threat seriously, even though I can eat your body weight in food in one day. I’m not going to change my mind.”
When I went back inside, Helen was carrying her last box toward the door. “Chuck the Fuck called.”
“Okay.”
She set down the box. “Can I have a hug?”
I had been fighting tears since I walked in but once it was time to hug I couldn’t hold back. I started crying. She pulled me into her body. “Fuck, you’re still my best friend,” she said near my ear. “One of us had to make the first move, otherwise we would have ended up like those weird, old, spinster couples who live together in a hoarderish apartment.”
“We’re not that old.” I sniffled.
“It was time.”
I nodded in agreement but couldn’t say the words.
In less than a week, Helen had found someone as crazy beautiful and brave as she was. Within four days, she had quit her job and become someone’s live-in girlfriend. I was going to be stuck ladling tortilla soup alone for eternity. It all seemed too fast, even for Helen, but what if it actually worked out?
After they left, I called Chucky.
He answered with, “Hey, Fatbutt.”
“What’s up Shitstick?”
“I heard Helen moved out.”
“So what. Helen and I can live apart.”
“That’s not why I called. Jesus, why are you so hostile toward me, Fatbutt?”
“I don’t know, Chucky, maybe because you call me Fatbutt.”
“I just wanted to see if you wanted a roommate?” He actually sounded sincere.
“You?!” I said, like it was the worst idea I had ever heard.
“You’ll get free cleanings from me and I’ll pay half the rent and bills.”
“Free cleanings? As in my teeth?”
“Yes, what do you think I’m talking about, stupid?”
“You’re not going anywhere near my mouth, ever!”
“Charlotte, listen, Mom is driving me crazy with her hovering. I need to get out of here. I’ll be making a ton of money once I pass my exams and go to work with Dad.”
My brother had two months left of school and then his state boards before he could become a legit dentist. It was actually quite remarkable that he had handled living with our parents all that time.
“I know Mom still cuts the crust off your sandwiches. Don’t expect that kind of shit around here.”
“I told her to stop doing that. It’s embarrassing. Please, just consider it.”
I knew I could live with Chucky. That’s one thing about siblings. You go through the gauntlet with them when you’re kids. You’ve imagined strangling them so many times that by the time you’re adults you’re pretty much desensitized to their crap. I once made my brother walk home in the rain from high school because he told the guy I was dating that I wore dirty underwear. Chucky got pneumonia. My mom acted like he was dying. While he was home sick from school, he went into my room and deleted a twelve-page term paper I had to turn in the following day. I was so mad that I literally threw up in his face, though not on purpose.
I waited after that to exact my revenge. The day before his big state championship wrestling match, I mashed up a bunch of laxatives and put them in his protein shake. That is how evil we had gotten. I actually wanted my brother to shit his singlet in front of the whole school. But he was onto me. He didn’t drink it, thank god. After dumping out the shake, he spent the afternoon squirting hot sauce into all of my shoes while I was at math tutoring. I smelled like sriracha for the rest of senior year. We had grown up a lot since then.